Hundreds of thousands of people are still trapped in fraud centers in Southeast Asia, according to the United Nations. Many victims were lured by fake recruitment posts on platforms such as Facebook, Jacob Sims - a researcher at the Asia Center, Harvard University, an expert on transnational and human rights crimes in Southeast Asia, said.
"They were taken into complexes like tents, with barbed wire fences, canteen and iron windows. They were taken in and forced to cheat. If they don't, they will be beaten, tortured, abused, and even killed," he said.
These fraud complexes are mainly located in Cambodia and Myanmar, especially in border areas.
"Criminal groups have a very strategic plan. They seek places with weak governance capacity, local governments are vulnerable to manipulation and corruption spreads. These are ideal conditions for them to join hands with local interest groups, said Hammerli Sriyai, a researcher at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore.
Criminal organizations have spent decades building a protection network, Sims said. Many networks that used to operate gambling have switched to the fraud center model when the COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed international trade.
Local officials and some economic interest groups often colluded with the operation of fraudulent centers, in return with commissions - Joanne Lin, senior researcher at ISEAS-Yusof Ishak pointed out.
For a long time, fraudulent centers have relied on human resources that have been bought and sold or exploited. The 2025 report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that victims come from more than 50 countries around the world.
The pandemic has created a new vulnerable group: People who used to have stable jobs, knew many foreign languages, lived in urban areas, were educated, young and knowledgeable about technology. This expands the range of potential victims who can be scammed to fraudulent centers, Sims added.
If previously the people who were forced to be scammed were mainly Chinese and Thai, now this force has more young Myanmar and Cambodia.
Fraud rings also exploit new technology to increase sophistication. Online translation tools and deepfake technology make scams more convincing. The most common is the "pig killing" scam, in which the scammer pretends to build friendship or affection with the victim and then lures them to invest in a virtual project.
gangs also use cryptocurrency and DeFi financial instruments such as Stablecoin for money laundering. According to Kristina Amerhauser - an expert at the Global Anti-Crime Initiative with a National Organized Committee (GI-TOC), these currencies are used in cybercrime activities because they are difficult to trace and have high anonymousity.
As we move to pre-match cryptography (such as USD), the steps to verify the identities of many exchanges are still limited, making them an attractive tool for criminals, she said.
Due to the nature of cross-border fraud, the authorities have many difficulties in handling it. Even as agencies like Interpol trace the behind behind, finding the right authority to coordinate the handling is still a challenge, according to Yen Zhi Yi - an analyst at the S. Rajaratnam International Research Institute (RSIS), Nanyang University of Technology, Singapore.
